Dr.Gary Weissmann

Research and Academic Interests:

My research primarily focuses on three areas – (1) fluvial sedimentology and stratigraphy in a sedimentary basin context, (2) the influence of aquifer heterogeneity on groundwater flow and contaminant transport, and (3) diversity in the geosciences. In fluvial sedimentology, my students and I, along with colleagues at the University of Aberdeen, University of Glasgow, and UNM, have identified over 700 continental sedimentary basins around the world. From satellite imagery and groundtruth characterization, we are evaluating facies distributions from fluvial deposition in these basins. Most of this deposition is occurring on distributive fluvial systems (DFS), so facies models as we know them must be revised to understand the variability recognized on the DFSs. Our manuscripts in Geology (2010), Journal of Sedimentary Research (2010), SEPM Special Publications 97 (2011) and 104 (2013), and Geomorphology (2015) explain the fundamentals of these concepts.

In our hydrogeology research, my students and I have been constructing detailed heterogeneity models based on outcrop analogs or shallow geophysics in order to understand the influence of sedimentary structure on groundwater flow and contaminant dispersion. In the past, we conducted work using geostatistics to model heterogeneity distributions. This didn’t provide sufficient detail to help evaluate the physical nature of dispersion. Our new models that have a grid cell size around 2-3 mm, do provide valuable information on fine-scale dispersion. Our challenge is to upscale these highly resolved models in a geologically sensible manner.

My research on diversity has led to workshop offerings at the Earth Educator’s Rendezvous in 2015 and 2016 on “context diversity.” Along with my colleague, Roberto Ibarra (now emeritus from UNM Sociology), we are studying the influence of applying Multicontext Theory (Ibarra 2001; Chávez and Longerbeam 2016) in the geoscience (and other STEM) classroom. Let me know if you have questions on this! We are working on some short publications to explain this approach to diversity.

Other Publications

Weissmann, G.S., Tapping into the Roots of my approaches to geoscience, in Longerbeam, S.D., and Chávez, A.F., Going Inward: The Role of cultural Introspection in College Teaching, Peter Lang Press, 2016.